BIRTH, HOME, EDUCATION, EARLY CAREER, TIMES, AND FIRST MARRIAGE OF EDWARD SOMERSET, LORD HERBERT.

As already related, Henry,[A] fifth Earl of Worcester, married in June, 1600, while yet attached to the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and, therefore, most likely he was resident at Worcester House, in the Strand, a building of some importance from its magnitude and position, as well as from the princely character of the noble possessor of the property.

There, it is reasonable to conclude, was born Edward Somerset early in 1601, the son and heir whose eventful history will hereafter mainly occupy our attention, first as Lord Herbert, afterwards as the Earl of Glamorgan, and lastly, on succeeding to his father’s titles, as Earl and Marquis of Worcester.

The birth of this Lord Herbert has never before been attempted to be ascertained, wherefore the present assumed date requires confirmation. On the 14th of July, 1609, when he would thus probably be only eight years of age, we find him associated with his grandfather and father in a lease of lands in the manor of Wondy, Monmouth, and of the fishing, or river of Usk and Carlion, for their lives.[B]

His preceptor at Raglan Castle was Mr. Adams; but he does not appear, like his father, to have been at any college in England; as, however, he travelled much on the Continent at an early period of his life, it is possible he also finished his education at some foreign university. In a communication of singular interest, written late in life, hereafter given in full, he specially observes:—“Amongst Almighty God’s infinite mercies to me in this world, I account it one of the greatest that his divine goodness vouchsafed me parents as well careful as able to give me virtuous education, and extraordinary breeding at home and abroad, in Germany, France, and Italy, allowing me abundantly in those parts.” This summary is sufficiently explicit as regards the circuit of his travels, and the easy, agreeable circumstances under which it was performed, but still leaves it open to doubt whether he had completed his educational course before entering on his continental tour. Wood expressly states, in reference to Lord Herbert’s father, that after he had been two or three years at college he was sent to travel in France, Italy, &c., where he presumes he changed his religion for that of Rome.[109]

During the reign of James I., and while his grandfather was Keeper of the Privy Seal, no mention occurs of Lord Herbert enjoying any favour at Court, his courtier life commencing only in that of Charles I., according to allusions made in the document before noticed. On the accession of the latter monarch to the throne, Lord Herbert might be 24 years of age. In alluding to his “education and breeding,” coupled with his travels, he adds: “And since most plentifully at my master of most happy memory, the late King’s Court;” making it almost conclusive that his education was considered as completed shortly prior to the King’s decease, in 1625.

In 1627 his grandfather was at Worcester House, whence he wrote to the Earl of Huntingdon on the 11th of June, informing him of his illness and inability to leave his bedchamber.[C]

The first year of the reign of Charles I. was an auspicious one, therefore, for the young Lord Herbert. His father, a stalwart, hale man, was in the prime of life, only 48 years of age, lord of one of the finest castles in the kingdom, whether considered for the beauty, strength and importance of its structure and its commanding situation, or the extent of its parks, pastures, plantations, and forests; it was a luxurious place well stored with paintings, furniture, and plate, while it was surrounded with every embellishment of fountains, fishponds, statuary, and gardens that art or wealth could command. Lord Herbert himself was rich in acquired knowledge, and in whatever way his natural genius then displayed itself, such a mind as he possessed must have afforded many evidences of latent talent. One important part of a young nobleman’s education in Elizabeth’s time, and later, was that of horsemanship, particularly in the tilt-yard, a kind of adjunct to noble residences, supposed by many to have existed even at Raglan Castle, but such an opinion is not even authorised by any tradition. Some interest he might take in tournaments, but we easily suspect without aiming at, or succeeding in that skill in manoeuvres so requisite in the fierce and fiery jousts appertaining to such knightly contests, equipped in heavy armour, wielding a ponderous lance, and mimicking all the maddest encounters of the fellest enemies. We doubt if his talent lay that way. His grandfather’s horsemanship has been greatly extolled by all writers, in alluding to his character. In his youth (it is said) he was remarkable for his athletic acquirements, distinguishing himself by the manly exercises of riding and tilting, in which he was perhaps superior to any of his contemporaries. But we have no reason to extol the grandson for like success in these chivalric exercises.

We conceive he was otherwise disqualified, that he was too light of weight and too short in stature. He appears to have been of slender figure, and rather under than above the middle standard in height. In another point, indirectly perhaps affecting this same matter, he did not possess that easy, boisterous speech which armed assailants may often be called on to assume, to strike terror into a foe, by throwing him off his guard. He himself acknowledges, later in life, to this vocal defect, when, in writing to Charles II. he admits that he takes up the pen, as he says,—“To ease your Majesty of a trouble incident to the prolixity of speech, and a natural defect of utterance which I accuse myself of.” “The prolixity of speech” any one may imagine, both from the letter in which this passage occurs, as well as in the noble lord’s general correspondence throughout his life; it seems to be a style in which the close of each sentence, or its matter, suggests the next, to be followed again in like manner, until the main subject becomes so overlaid as to be lost in needless verbose amplification. But he could and did write tersely enough on occasion. No man could then better display the admirable art of compressing large meaning into small compass. If eloquence in speaking “troubled” him, eloquent writing assuredly cost him, it would appear, vastly more trouble in the labour of the pen. We suspect that concentration of thought was natural to him, but its elaboration to produce that roundness of period assumed necessary for the style of a courtly gentleman, confused and perplexed him. We imagine the prosy writer, being conversationally sententious; perhaps painfully so to the ears of fashionable society, delighting as it does in the trivialties of such conversation as that which would principally characterise the Court of those days; rendered perhaps only the more irksome by his continuance in its fashionable frivolities for three or more years.

A very fair specimen of the mechanical knowledge of the period, when Lord Herbert was finishing his education, is afforded in the work of Henry Peacham, published in 1627, entitled “The Compleat Gentleman.” In his ninth chapter, treating of Geometry, he says: “Out of Egypt, Thales brought it into Greece, where it received that perfection we see it now hath. For by means hereof are found out the forms and draughts of all figures, greatness of all bodies, all manner of measures and weights, the cunning working of all tools; with all artificial instruments whatsoever. All engines of war, for many whereof (being antiquated) we have no proper names; as, Exosters, Sambukes, Catapultes, Testudos, Scorpions, &c. Petardes, Grenades, great Ordinance of all sorts.

“By the benefit, likewise, of Geometry, we have our goodly ships, gallies, bridges, mills, chariots and coaches, (which were invented in Hungary, and there called Cotzki), some with two wheels, some with more; pullies and cranes of all sorts. She (Geometry) also with her ingenious hand rears all curious roofs and arches, stately theatres, the columns simple and compounded, pendant galleries, stately windows, turrets, &c. And first brought to light our clocks and curious watches (unknown unto the ancients); lastly, our kitchen jacks, even the wheel-barrow. Besides whatsoever hath artificial motion, either by air, water, wind, sinews or cords, as all manner of musical instruments, water works and the like.

“Yea, moreover, such is the infinite subtilty, and immense depth of this admirable art, that it dares contend even with nature’s self, in infusing life, as it were, into the senseless bodies of wood, stone, or metal. Witness the wooden dove of Archytas, so famous not only by Agellius, but many other authors beyond exception; which by reason of weights equally poised within the body, and a certain proportion of air (as the spirit of life enclosed), flew cheerfully forth, as if it had been a living dove.”

This Cambridge Master of Arts appears much delighted with these and certain minute automata, occupying two pages in describing Scaliger’s ship, to swim and steer itself by means of the pith of rushes, bladder, and little strings of sinews; a wooden eagle “which mounted up into the air, and flew before the Emperor to the gates of Nuremberg;” an iron fly that flew about a table; ants and other insects made of ivory, so small that the “joints of their legs could not be discerned;” a four wheeled coach, which a fly could “cover with her wings;” a ship with all its sails, “which a little bee could overspread;” and, “of later times, Hadrian Junius, tells us that he saw with great delight and admiration, at Mechlin, in Brabant, a cherry-stone cut in the form of a basket, wherein were fifteen pair of dice distinct, each with their spots and number, very easily of a good eye to be discerned;” how “the Ilias of Homer written, was enclosed within a nut;” while, to conclude, Scaliger, relates “of a flea he saw with a long chain of gold about its neck.” The account of these wonders of art, winds up with descriptions of brazen, glass, and silver models, or planetariums illustrating the situations and motions of the heavenly bodies.

From this serious discourse, by a grave scholar, and contemporary, relating to the labours of the first mathematicians of a bygone as well as of the existing age, we may form a valuable conception of the state of science, in its popular character, when Edward, Lord Herbert, entered upon his own course of practical philosophical pursuits, affording the ground work of his Century of Inventions, the accumulated digest of whatever he had effected during the early, middle, and later years of his life. Viewed from any other point than the period in which he lived, the means of information around him, and the comparatively limited extent of scientific knowledge, the modern reader would form a serious misconception of his singular abilities, his versatile mechanical talent and the fecundity of his inventive ingenuity. There can be little or no doubt but that he was well versed in the mathematical knowledge of his times, and that it principally contributed in aiding him to obtain those mechanical results, to which we consequently find him restricting his attention.

Lord Bacon had died but the year before the publication of Peacham’s work. Alchemy still ruled and had its adepts and votaries; and Ashmole made a large collection of alchemical writings, for Chemistry was but just faintly emerging from the mysticisms of its precursor, Alchemy.

In the year 1628 Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, being then about 27 years of age, married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Dormer, eldest son of Robert Lord Dormer of Weng, and sister to Robert Earl of Carnarvon.[5] She became in 1629 the mother of Henry[D] Somerset (afterwards created first Duke of Beaufort); and had besides two daughters, Anne, who married Henry Frederick, third Earl of Arundel of the Howards; and Elizabeth, who married William Herbert, first Marquis of Powis.

No contemporary or other hand has recorded any details of Lord Herbert’s marriage, or even any particulars of his early life; in the absence of decisive information, we can only surmise from stray facts the possibility of his having withdrawn from the Court, taken up his abode at Raglan Castle, and there occupied himself in those scientific studies and pursuits which were his special delight at that early period, and which were indeed the solace even of his declining years.

Judging from a statement that occurs in his writings,[E] it is most likely that in 1628, soon after his marriage, he engaged the services of “the unparalleled workman both for trust and skill, Caspar Kaltoff,” of whom we shall have occasion to speak more at length hereafter, and who, he says, was “as in a school under me employed;”[F] by which we understand that Kaltoff had the practical management of those mechanical and other inventions which, then commenced, became the principal study and employment of his Lordship’s leisure during the remainder of his life. He must have set up a complete laboratory or workshop in which to operate on the many varied ingenious contrivances and experiments, of only part of which he has left us a most interesting catalogue raisonnÉ.

The early genius of Lord Herbert would appear to have exhibited itself in an attachment to mathematical studies, and a singular predilection, in a young nobleman, for mechanical pursuits. He has himself mentioned two instances which we consider may fairly be referred to his earliest continental tour, accompanied by his tutor. Speaking of a certain contrivance for a fountain, he explicitly declares:—“This I confess, I have seen and learned of the great mathematician Claudius his studies at Rome, he having made a present thereof unto a Cardinal.” And when, alluding to a peculiar kind of lever, he pointedly remarks: “This I saw in the arsenal at Venice;”[G] thus showing how early his mind was impressed with those studies which became the distinguishing feature of his writings; and all the more surprising in him, considering his birth, his times, and the originality and fruitfulness of his inventive talent, which might have found ample scope in some branch of literature, in agriculture, or in military works.

His employment of a foreign mechanic was quite in accordance with the spirit of the age. National and private undertakings, as well as manufacturing and other matters requiring engineering skill, were ordinarily superintended by eminent Italian, Dutch, German, French, Swiss, or other continental engineers.

During a period of seven years, from the time of his marriage, his life appears to have borne an entirely studious and domestic character, spent, most likely, principally at Raglan. To the ample leisure and quiet thus afforded him we may attribute all his lesser inventions, such as the numerous schemes for effecting and conveying secret correspondence, which in early and troubled times were esteemed as highly useful; some of his automata, amusive toys, drawing and other instruments and mechanical devices. He appears to have taken considerable interest in multiplying these comparatively minor inventions almost to exhaustion, as it were, of the several subjects to which they apply. So fertile, indeed, was this inventive faculty in him, that he himself has stated: “The more that you shall be pleased to make use of my inventions, the more inventive shall you ever find me, one invention begetting still another.”[H]

Among his larger works we must rank his water-raising engines, in which his earliest efforts are exhibited in the water-works he erected in connection with the Citadel or Keep of Raglan Castle; which, as will be more minutely explained in a future commentary, belongs to this period. It probably depended for its operation on the influence of heat from burning fuel acting on a suitably constructed boiler containing water, and so arranged as to be able to apply the expansive force of steam to the driving of water through vertical pipes to a considerable elevation, which in this instance is supposed to have been limited to a large cistern on the summit of the Citadel or Donjon, known as the Tower of Gwent. This early work may, in fact, have been the occasion of calling in the aid of Caspar Kaltoff; and once thus employed, his after retention by such a master is readily conceivable. But master, and man, and works have all disappeared, and no printed, written, or drawn record or model remains of the waterworks there set up, to enable us to point distinctly to precise particulars of arrangement. All that the inquisitive and ingenious investigator can find to reward his most prying curiosity, are certain strange mysterious grooves in the external wall of the Citadel, on one side facing the moat and the castle, which point like a hieroglyphic inscription to the precise place where once stood in active operation the first practical application in a primitive form of a means of employing steam as a useful mechanical agent.

The annexed engraving represents a view of that side of the Citadel which looks across the moat towards the castle; that is, across the place where a bridge once stood, and opposite the Fountain Court. Commencing from below we observe a gothic doorway, which was the entrance to the draw and the permanent bridges. Over the arched interior of this entrance is a chamber or cell, measuring about seven feet by five feet, and better than six feet high in the centre. On the outside front of the cell are seen indications of two square places; and above them, one to each, two upright channels or grooves, each one foot wide and the same in depth. Adjoining is another groove but terminating at bottom in two lesser grooves of four inches and a half in width, connected a little way up with the large groove. This second portion has a distinct cell behind it, less in dimensions than the first. From the summit of the three large vertical channels to the ground measures forty-six feet.

Now it would have been quite possible to work a small steam boiler in each cell, and the pipes from those boilers might have been enclosed in the grooves described, entering inwards at top to discharge their contents into a cistern on the Citadel roof. And the boilers might have been conveniently supplied with water from the moat either by hand pumps, or by forming a vacuum for that purpose. It is here, however, unnecessary to enter upon mechanical details, as the subject will appear at large when describing his matured Invention.

That inimitable portrait painter Vandyck, who was born 1598–9, studied under Rubens, and was an especial favourite with Charles the First, has undoubtedly left us a faithful portraiture of the features of both his Lordship and of Elizabeth his first wife; the former dating probably between 1621 and 1626, the latter between 1628 and 1635.

The portrait of Lady Herbert, three-quarter size, is to be seen in the dining-room at Badminton House. It displays an intellectual countenance of a serious, dignified and most pleasing cast; her dark auburn hair is combed close from the forehead backwards, but so as still to leave a fringe of small curls in front; her hair braided and knotted behind is entwined with a string of pearls, while a portion of her tresses from behind falls in abundant ringlets about her neck and shoulders. She wears a large plain pearl necklace; with single pearl-drops as ear-rings. Her dress is low-bodied, of white satin, with the usual long tight stomacher, full short sleeves and large white vandyked frills or cuffs; on her arms, near each elbow, are single strings of pearls, like bracelets. Over her shoulders is thrown a light narrow fur tippet with long ends terminating backwards in short tails. The artist has represented her looking slightly aside as she might appear crossing her drawing-room, in the highly graceful and becoming style which Vandyck always so happily selected for the subjects of his magic pencil.

This may have been the period to which his Lordship later in life fondly looked back as his “golden days.” He was, however, doomed to suffer his first great bereavement in the decease of his young wife at Worcester House in the Strand, on Sunday the 31st of May, 1635. She was buried at St. Cadocus, the parish church of Raglan, within the family vault beneath the Beaufort Chapel. He was thus left a widower with the charge of his son and heir not above six years of age, and two daughters.

A singular error, as to the date, occurring in all genealogies and biographical accounts that mention the decease of Lady Herbert, renders it the more important to refer to the following certificate obtained from the Heralds’ Office:—

“The right honourable Lady the Lady Elizabeth, late wife of the right honourable Edward Somerset Lord Herbert, son and heir to the right honourable Henry Earl of Worcester, and daughter of Sir William Dormer, Knight, eldest son of Robert Lord Dormer, of Wing, (which Sir William died in the lifetime of his father) and sister to the now Earl of Carnarvon, departed this mortal life at Worcester House in the Strand, near London, on Sunday the last of May, 1635, leaving issue, Mr. Henry Somerset, only son, about six years of age, Mrs. Anne eldest and Mrs. Elizabeth youngest daughter. Her body was honourably conveyed to Ragland, in the County of Monmouth in Wales, there to be interred. This Certificate was taken by George Owen Yorke, herald, the 1st day of June, 1635, to be registered in the Office of Arms, and testified by the right honourable Lord,

“Edward Herbert.”

Among the family papers is a letter bearing date this year, alluding to Lord Herbert, but addressed by Secretary Coke to his Lordship’s father:—

“Right Honourable,

“Upon a letter received from your noble son, the Lord Herbert, whereby he signifieth, that the Deputation is now come from the Lord President of Wales, I have according to his Lordship’s desire represented his thankfulness to his Majesty, and have order from his Majesty to signify to your Lordship that it is not only in this particular case; But hereafter also he will be graciously mindful of your good service done heretofore, in the Lieutenancies of Glamorgan and Monmouth, and your willing resigning of them. And he hath also commanded me to tell the Earl of Bridgewater, that he shall proceed therein with your Lordship in the same manner the Earl of Northampton his predecessor did, and not otherwise: which accordingly I have signified to his Lordship. And thus having imparted to your Lordship both his Majesty’s gracious favour towards yourself and your son, who in this business hath performed as much respect and duty as can be expected from a worthy son, I humbly take leave and so remain,

“Your Lordship’s humble servant,

“John Coke.

“Whitehall, December 3rd. 1635.
To the right honourable the Earl of Worcester, &c.”

It is not at all unlikely that after the funeral his Lordship returned to Worcester House. London would afford him many advantages for the gratification of his scientific pursuits, not to be obtained in the country. It appears, indeed, pretty evident that about this period he set up in the Tower his large wheel for exhibiting self-motive power, which the learned assume to be a mechanical fallacy, but which no one has yet proved to general comprehension to be an impossibility. In a scientific point of view, but particularly in connection with the life of this remarkable man, a subject of this nature cannot be lightly passed over. It affects his reputation more than appears on the surface, as we shall show in the course of our observations.

It was a machine, consisting of a wheel fourteen feet in diameter, carrying forty weights of fifty pounds each,[I] and is supposed to have rotated on an axle, supported on two pillars or upright frames. His Lordship has been very precise in describing all the circumstances under which it was shown. There were present Charles the First, accompanied by two extraordinary Ambassadors, the Duke of Richmond, the Duke of Hamilton, with most of the Court; and Sir William Balfour was at the time Lord Lieutenant of the Tower. Now the latter circumstance would fix the date as not being later than 1641, while other facts make it reasonable to suppose the experiment took place at least two or three years earlier. Up to 1638 Charles the First had reigned for ten years in comparative peace and leisure. May it not have been during this lull in the portending storm of public discontent that royalty deigned to inspect a singular piece of mechanism, supposed to move of itself without any aid from external agency? In 1642, Sir John Byron was made Lord Lieutenant of the Tower; and Sir William Balfour[J] was in command of the Parliamentary forces at Edge-hill.

This wheel experiment may have been made in 1638–9, prior to the decease of his lady, and during the most peaceable portion of his Majesty’s reign; and indeed while his Lordship’s own domestic affairs were wearing their most cheerful and agreeable aspect.

His Lordship has been charged with dealing in paradoxes, and none greater than the one under consideration need be sought for. It relates to a problem which for 2000 years has not only perplexed mathematicians, but likewise been a stumbling-block to many ingenious mechanicians during at least five centuries. What mathematicians fail to prove and what mechanicians fail to produce, every modern philosopher demands shall be stamped as an impossibility, as absurd as it is impossible. Now the dilemma is, How has the author of the “Century of Inventions” fallen into the common, vulgar error of believing in the possibility of perpetual motion; and not only so, but publicly exhibiting a machine pretending to that character?

We are not disposed to question either his talent, or his veracity, hence the difficulty of offering any simple, direct, satisfactory reply to what otherwise appears to be an easily answered interrogative. Eminent writers of the seventeenth and previous centuries maintained that perpetual motion was possible. Dr. Dee, in his very curious preface to the first translation of Euclid into English, wrote favourably on this very topic; so that, however the modern scientific sceptic may blame his Lordship for want of skill, or, worse, of veracity, his opinion was quite in accordance with the estimation in which the subject was viewed in his day. But he goes a step farther, he speaks of a practical result. Hence he leaves us no alternative but to declare that he propounds either a truth or a falsehood; and if false that he was either himself mistaken, or deceived by others. But either way it is difficult to arrive at a thoroughly satisfactory conclusion, even as to what his Lordship actually intended and performed in this instance, owing to the usual vagueness of his own statements.

At 38 years of age Lord Herbert had enjoyed seven years of matrimonial felicity, and had been during four years a widower. In 1639, his son Henry would be 10 years old, his two daughters much younger, so that as well for their education as for the gratification of his own scientific investigations, he may have continued for some time to reside at Worcester House: the Strand and all that neighbourhood being then in the occupancy of families of title, wealth and high position. During his father’s lifetime, the resident housekeeper was James Redman, Esquire, as we learn from the list of his household.

The private studies and pursuits in which Lord Herbert was indefatigably engaged, must have occupied his attention from an innate love of physical science. The society in which he moved had no tendency that way, while the times in which he lived were far from affording any encouragement for such investigations as those in which he was principally engaged. The metropolis in his day was without coaches until 1625, when they were first used by the gentry, and ten years later hackney coaches were considered to have arrived at such a dangerous increase that their plying was restrained by law; and London streets were either so bad, or the treasury so low, that penalties were levied on all heavy vehicles passing over the highways. It is characteristic of the state of our laws at that period, that Dr. Leighton was for his writings sentenced to barbarous mutilations, as also happened in 1633 to the unfortunate learned Mr. Prynne, and four years later to John Lilburn. The pillory, whipping culprits through the streets, cropping ears and other mutilations and barbarities were ordinary punishments, and in 1636 the plague was raging throughout the metropolis and its suburbs, with all its accustomed terrors.

But not in this view alone do we see little to inspirit him in the ardent pursuit of mechanical employments, another and more serious obstacle arose from his belonging, like his father and ancestors, to the Roman Catholic faith. The laws against Papists were inconsistently stringent in England on religious grounds; and strange to say, in imperial Rome, the very seat of the papacy, absurdly severe denunciations were pronounced against even the free discussion of scientific subjects. On the memorable 22nd of June, 1633, Galileo, prosecuted by the Inquisition at Rome, was compelled to abjure his astronomical theories and discoveries as heretical! The inquiry with its results must have deeply interested Lord Herbert; but what could he hope to gain even from his own party, as the inventor of a “semi-omnipotent engine?” Thus situated he was surrounded by circumstances nowise calculated to stimulate his mental activity in the peculiar occupations that employed his leisure and his fortune; but the fact offers an invaluable proof of the intense satisfaction an inquiring mind always experiences in the realization of its mental speculations.

There is every reason to believe that his studies were completed, his tastes fixed, his experiments pretty well matured at this period, and that it was, therefore, the occasion of stamping his future character. He was then terminating his “golden days,” to enter upon a very different career. While, therefore, most anxious to avoid every appearance of substituting fictions for facts, we feel impelled to indulge in an attempt to account for his long serious devotion to employments so apparently foreign to either his education, his station in life, or the necessities of the times; while, indeed, on the other hand, all operated against him, owing to the darkness, ignorance, persecution and prevailing prejudices of the age.

It appears from his published work that Lord Herbert was better versed in mathematical than in classical literature. His mental activity may have been promoted by physical causes, assuming that from delicacy of constitution he may have been thereby disposed to those studious habits, to which he was ever after so much attached; the Vandyck portrait of him in his youth would indicate that he was not constituted for undergoing much severity of exercise in the fatiguing sports and pastimes then in vogue.

In 1639, his confidential workman, Caspar Kaltoff, would have expended eleven years in constructing models and machines to establish the practicability of the many novel schemes which his Lordship had, up to that time, developed. Meanwhile, his own reading was no doubt pursued with vigour, and we cannot believe him to have been unpossessed of the celebrated authorities among English and foreign writers. He must have studied with interest Ramelli’s very elaborate volume, 1588, on machines, illustrated with one hundred and ninety-five large, finely executed copper-plate engravings; the popular Spiritalia of Hero of Alexandria; with even, perhaps, the works of the engineer and architect Solomon De Caus, published in 1615; together with the labours of many kindred writers. Judging, however, from internal evidence, there was one, among many English authors, whose work especially gratified his taste, the “Mysteries of Nature and Art,” by John Bate, which went through two editions, dating 1634 and 1635, containing a “Booke of Water-workes,” treating of “evaporating water, and rarifying ayre.” The peculiarity of such studies was sufficient to separate him from the fashionable society of Courts, and the too frequently frivolous society attendant even at Raglan Castle. If he then made few enemies, his conversation and pursuits were little calculated to enlarge his social acquaintance, and may even have early inspired a belief in his possessing equal eccentricity and enthusiasm. His memory, however, cannot fail to be cherished by posterity as the illustrious possessor of a highly cultivated intellect, displaying a singularly powerful, original, protean inventive genius.

Footnotes

[A] The annexed specimen of his Lordship’s autograph, during his father’s lifetime, is from a MS. certificate in the British Museum dated 21st May, 1604.

[B] Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1603–1610. Edited by Mrs. M. A. E. Green. 8vo. 1857, page 529.

[109] An. À Wood. Vol. 3, pp. 199–204.

[C] Bodleian Library, “Carte Papers—Earl of Huntingdon’s Papers, Temp. Eliz. Car. II. 77.” No 120. The annexed engraving is a facsimile of his autograph to the letter in question.

[5] Atkyns.

[D] Henry, Duke of Beaufort, died in 1699, at 70 years of age, so that he must have been born in 1629.

[E] Dedication to the “Century.”

[F] Ibid.

[G] “The Century,” articles Nos. 21 and 26.

[H] The “Century,” Dedication.

[I] The “Century,” Article No. 56.

[J] It is not certain how long Sir William Balfour was Lord Lieutenant of the Tower prior to 1641.